Seasons
This is a forum or general chit-chat, small talk, a "hey, how ya doing?" and such. Or hell, get crazy deep on something. Whatever you like.
Posts 541 - 552 of 6,170
Posts 541 - 552 of 6,170
I've written many many pieces of shit, most of them not exactly large, but maybe the shittiness makes up for it. 
The thing is, all my shit is unfinished. Except this one I wrote in school that had something to do with telepathic monkeys with ray guns. This is what happens when it's the day before your assignment is due and you have no idea what the hell to write about.
As for poetry, I can do that easy most of the time. Sometimes even when I'm just talking to someone and describe something I get poetic. A lot of poetry I've seen is awful dry to me though...I can't write anything I don't have some sort of feeling about. I can't write about an apple unless I think of some memorable incident involving an apple, and put in all the emotional stuff most people wouldn't think of. Unfortunately, I must not have had any memorable incidents involving apples, otherwise I'd remember them.
The thing is, all my shit is unfinished. Except this one I wrote in school that had something to do with telepathic monkeys with ray guns. This is what happens when it's the day before your assignment is due and you have no idea what the hell to write about. As for poetry, I can do that easy most of the time. Sometimes even when I'm just talking to someone and describe something I get poetic. A lot of poetry I've seen is awful dry to me though...I can't write anything I don't have some sort of feeling about. I can't write about an apple unless I think of some memorable incident involving an apple, and put in all the emotional stuff most people wouldn't think of. Unfortunately, I must not have had any memorable incidents involving apples, otherwise I'd remember them.
Got in late on the whole writing conversation (been out of town), so a couple of things.
I'm pretty sure Tolkien based most of the elvish language (or at the least the phonemes) on the sounds of Finnish, which as I understand it is a dying language because most modern Finns speak Swedish. Also, jbryanc (I think it was you) mentioned that thing about Tolkien meeting with a bunch of other academics amongst which LoTR took shape. One of those guys was C.S. Lewis (of Lion, Witch and Wardrobe fame).
As to writing itself, I share the common curse of not finishing things that I start. At last count I have one play, four screenplays, one radio serial, a novel and a trilogy that are all at various stages of incompletion. Compare that to one full length play and a handful of short stories I have completed.
As to the process I use, for longer stuff I have to know two things before I begin. Where I'm starting and where I'm ending. There are usually about a half dozen key scenes I want to hit at some point along the way. The trouble is I keep getting detoured. It usually makes for some of the more interesting aspects of a story, but it has a tendency to blow out the word budget on the original plan.
I usually find that to work out who your characters and setting are you've just got to write about them until you start to build up the picture as you go along. Once I get to that point I usually start again so I can make things consistent from the get go and use the knowledge I've built up to better set up what comes later in the early stages (ie foreshadowing and establishing certain character traits earlier).
I'm pretty sure Tolkien based most of the elvish language (or at the least the phonemes) on the sounds of Finnish, which as I understand it is a dying language because most modern Finns speak Swedish. Also, jbryanc (I think it was you) mentioned that thing about Tolkien meeting with a bunch of other academics amongst which LoTR took shape. One of those guys was C.S. Lewis (of Lion, Witch and Wardrobe fame).
As to writing itself, I share the common curse of not finishing things that I start. At last count I have one play, four screenplays, one radio serial, a novel and a trilogy that are all at various stages of incompletion. Compare that to one full length play and a handful of short stories I have completed.
As to the process I use, for longer stuff I have to know two things before I begin. Where I'm starting and where I'm ending. There are usually about a half dozen key scenes I want to hit at some point along the way. The trouble is I keep getting detoured. It usually makes for some of the more interesting aspects of a story, but it has a tendency to blow out the word budget on the original plan.
I usually find that to work out who your characters and setting are you've just got to write about them until you start to build up the picture as you go along. Once I get to that point I usually start again so I can make things consistent from the get go and use the knowledge I've built up to better set up what comes later in the early stages (ie foreshadowing and establishing certain character traits earlier).
I've never been able to get both a start and an end to a decent story, so there's my main problem there...
I never worry about the ending until I get there. I like trying to get there better than actually getting there, I think. Because once you get to the end, regardless of what method you use, you gotta do all that revising crap, and by that time it's not creative anymore. Just some mechanical crap you gotta do to improve your story. This is probably a large part of the reason I never GET to the ending.
You could always try one of those unique writing styles, like two authors writing back and forth to each other.
Or come up with the beginning and keep writing whatever you're writing until it takes on a life of its own. It does NOT get any easier at that point, but it does seem like it's been writing itself all along. Like 100 pages down the road, you may think to yourself, "Oh, so THAT's why I put that particular picture in the stained glass window". Things like that.
Depending on the mental stability of the author, the story can get quite demented when writing that way. I should now.
Well, I'm currently stuck on chapter 2 of my sci-fi story, because I need a baby sitter for my main character who is currently seven years old, and I haven't felt like inventing another character for the job. Anybody want to babysit Spencer?
But as far as writing goes, if I don't have at least some idea of what the result is going to be, where I'm shooting for, I just can't find any direction. That's the trouble with a lot of the incomplete stuff I have. I just lose the direction of it. I mean it's great if you can just write until an ending emerges naturally, it's more organic that way, but that sort of story is only likely to satisfy you. A reader might not relate.
I do have a question, do people find that when they write prose that they focus seem to focus on certain aspects of the story at the expense of others? For example, I find personally that I concentrate on dialogue, action, and internal thoughts of characters and sometimes forget to do much in the way of description of setting and characters physically. I guess what I'm asking is what you consider the strengths and weaknesses of your writing to be?
I do have a question, do people find that when they write prose that they focus seem to focus on certain aspects of the story at the expense of others? For example, I find personally that I concentrate on dialogue, action, and internal thoughts of characters and sometimes forget to do much in the way of description of setting and characters physically. I guess what I'm asking is what you consider the strengths and weaknesses of your writing to be?
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